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A Brief History of Liberty

Using a fusion of philosophical, social scientific, and historical methods, -- A Brief History of Liberty -- offers a succinct survey of pivotal moments in the evolution of personal freedom, drawing on key historical figures from John Knox and Martin Luther to Karl Marx and Adam Smith to Roger Williams and Thurgood Marshall. The authors examine how past (if incomplete) successes in the struggle for liberty have led many of us to liberty's "last frontier": internal psychological obstacles to our being as autonomous as we would like to be. Readers are encouraged to reflect on their own concepts of personal freedom -- what it is, where it comes from, why they have it, and what it has done for them.